464 Chapter 18 GOTHIC EUROPET
he ancestors of the Gothic rib vault are the Romanesque vaults
found at Caen (FIG. 17-31), Durham (FIG. 17-33), and elsewhere.
The rib vault’s distinguishing feature is the crossed, or diagonal,
arches under its groins, as seen in the Saint-Denis ambulatory and
chapels (FIG. 18-3;compare FIG. 18-20). These arches form the arma-
ture,or skeletal framework, for constructing the vault. Gothic vaults
generally have more thinly vaulted webs (the masonry between the
ribs) than found in Romanesque vaults. But the chief difference be-
tween the two styles of rib vaults is the pointed arch,an integral part
of the Gothic skeletal armature. The first wide use of pointed arches
was in Sasanian architecture (FIG. 2-27), and Islamic builders later
adopted them. French Romanesque architects (FIGS. 17-1and 17-14)
borrowed the form from Muslim Spain and passed it to their Gothic
successors. Pointed arches allowed Gothic builders to make the
crowns of all the vault’s arches approximately the same level, regard-
less of the space to be vaulted. The Romanesque architects could not
achieve this with their semicircular arches.
The drawings here (FIG. 18-4) illustrate this key difference. In
FIG. 18-4a,the rectangle ABCD is an oblong nave bay to be vaulted.
AC and DB are the diagonal ribs;AB and DC,the transverse arches;
and AD and BC,the nave arcade’s arches. If the architect uses semi-
circular arches (AFB, BJC,and DHC), their radii and, therefore, their
heights (EF, IJ,and GH) will be different, because the width of a
semicircular arch determines its height. The result will be a vault
(FIG. 18-4b) with higher transverse arches (DHC) than the arcade’s
arches (CJB). The vault’s crown (F) will be still higher. If the builder
uses pointed arches (FIG. 18-4c), the transverse (DLC) and arcade
(BKC) arches can have the same heights (GL and IK in FIG. 18-4a).
The result will be a Gothic rib vault where the points of the arches
(L and K) are at the same level as the vault’s crown (F).
A major advantage of the Gothic vault is its flexibility, which per-
mits the vaulting of compartments of varying shapes, as may be seen at
Saint-Denis (FIG. 18-2). Pointed arches also channel the weight of the
vaults more directly downward than do semicircular arches. The vaults
therefore require less buttressing to hold them in place, in turn permit-
ting builders to open up the walls and place large windows beneath the
arches. Because pointed arches also lead the eye upward, they make
the vaults appear taller than they are. In FIG. 18-4,the crown (F) of
both the Romanesque (b) and Gothic (c) vaults is the same height
from the pavement, but the Gothic vault seems taller. Both the physical
and visual properties of rib vaults with pointed arches aided Gothic
builders in their quest for soaring height in church interiors.The Gothic Rib Vault
ARCHITECTURAL BASICS
18-4Diagram (a) and drawings of rib vaults with semicircular (b) and pointed (c) arches.
Pointed arches channel the weight of the rib vaults more directly downward than do semicircular arches, requiring less buttressing. Pointed arches
also make the vaults appear taller than they are.
b cCGH
JD EAFBI
CGL
KD EAFB
IFA BDGHLEIJ KaCrepresented a sharp break from past practice. Innovative rib vaults
resting on pointed, or ogival,arches (see “The Gothic Rib Vault,”
above, and FIG. 18-4) cover the ambulatory and chapels (FIG. 18-3).
These pioneering, exceptionally lightweight vaults spring from slender
columns in the ambulatory and from the thin masonry walls framing
the chapels. The lightness of the vaults enabled the builders to elimi-
nate the walls between the chapels (FIG. 18-2) and open up the outer
walls and fill them with stained-glass windows (see “Stained-Glass
Windows,” page 472). Suger and his contemporaries marveled at the
“wonderful and uninterrupted light” that poured in through the
“most sacred windows.” The abbot called the colored light lux nova,
“new light.” The multicolored rays coming through the windows
shone on the walls and columns, almost dissolving them. Both the
new type of vaulting and the use of stained glass became hallmarks of
French Gothic architecture.
Saint-Denis is also the key monument of Early Gothic sculp-
ture. Little of the sculpture that Suger commissioned for the west
facade of the abbey church survived the French Revolution of the
late 18th century (see Chapter 29), but much of the mid-12th-
century structure is intact. It consists of a double-tower westwork, as
at Saint-Étienne (FIG. 17-30) at Caen, and has massive walls in the
Romanesque tradition. A restored large central rose window (a circu-
lar stained-glass window), a new feature that became standard in
French Gothic architecture, punctuates the facade’s upper story. For
the three portals, Suger imported sculptors to carry on the rich
Romanesque heritage of southern France (see Chapter 17). But at
Saint-Denis, the sculptors introduced statues of Old Testament
kings, queens, and prophets attached to columns, which screened
the jambs of all three doorways.